THE DEFAMATION OF ALLEGRO, by Jan Irvin (excerpted from Astrotheology & Shamanism)

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, there was immense anticipation from Christians everywhere. This was thought to be a guarantee for the Church to prove Christianity correct. It appeared as though the only thing left to do was to read and interpret the scrolls and Christians would have all the proof they needed. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written in Semitic in the language of Aramaic between 250BCE and 136CE, which was the era that the Jesus character was said to be walking the earth. To find scrolls written in “His language” during the period of time in which he was said to be living, was a major finding and Christians everywhere were very excited about this. However, today we do not hear about this much at all, and for good reason. The information contained within the scrolls was exactly what the select, privileged few in the Church knew all along.

John Marco Allegro was a researcher in philology who had graduated with a first-class honors degree in Oriental Studies from Manchester University in England. He had earlier begun training for the Methodist ministry, but had left to pursue the degree course when he found that studying biblical languages was making him question the foundations of his Christian beliefs.
While working towards a doctorate at Oxford, he was invited to join the original Scrolls-editing team in 1953. In 1954, he became an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester. Considered an up-and-coming philologist in regards to middle-eastern and Mediterranean languages, Allegro was the only agnostic on the international team of translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of the other members of the “international” scrolls team were ordained Catholic priests, including Father de Vaux and Father Josef Milik of the École Biblique (the library publication/research arm of the Vatican), Father Jean Starcky, Father Maurice Baillet, and Monsignor Patrick Skehan. They were joined by Frank Cross of the McCormick Theological Seminary and the Albright Institute, Claus-Hunno Hunzinger from Gottingen and later, John Strugnell from Oxford.[1]

The work of this team, organized by Father de Vaux, was originally supposed to be published as soon as possible and open to scholarly interpretation. John Allegro was the only member to publish all his translations in learned journals as soon as he felt they were ready to be laid open to scrutiny. The other members tended to hold onto their allocations for so long that some people–including Allegro from time to time, in moments of extreme exasperation–suspected a cover-up and suppression of the research. Scholars who attempted to question the orthodox view (as Allegro found out) had their careers destroyed.

In 1956, Allegro gave a series of talks on BBC radio in which he suggested that elements of Christianity derived from the beliefs and practices of the Qumran community and probably from some of the events in the life and death of the Essene Teacher of Righteousness as depicted in the Scrolls. In other words, Christianity was, in part, a derivative religion. This caused outrage among some members of the team. By 1957, he believed their anger had subsided and returned to Jerusalem unaware of anything awry in his relationship with the other members of the
International team. He was soon to realize that the other members had clearly separated themselves from him because of his public statements and interpretation of scroll information.

A long, heated debate between John Allegro and the other research members of the Dead Sea Scrolls editing team ensued for decades. They held that Allegro had prematurely released information from the scrolls, particularly the Copper Scroll, with mistranslations. Allegro came to think that the other researchers were holding back information contained within the scrolls to promote their careers and to hide anything that might shake up the orthodox view about the origins of Christianity and Judaism.[2]Allegro pointed out that it was of utmost importance to release the scrolls as he translated them, even with possible errors, so that the rest of the research community would have access to the portion of the scrolls under his jurisdiction for peer review. The others wanted to wait until they had completed a definitive edition of the scrolls they were translating–an attitude that looked like possessiveness or secrecy from the outside. The conflict in approach came to a head over the Copper Scroll. Allegro’s interpretation differed fundamentally from the official line. He held back the book in which he offered his “provisional” translation (The Treasure of the Copper Scroll, 1960) for over three years to enable Father Josef Milik to publish his version. Milik had in fact published an unofficial translation in English and French in July 1959, and expected the official edition to be out before 1960. At the last minute, it was delayed at the printer’s and Allegro’s book came out first. Because of this unintentional pre-emption, Allegro was condemned for piracy by most of the establishment figures of scrolls research.[3]

…[W]hen Allegro went ahead with his own publication [of the Treasure of the Copper Scroll], he found himself in the embarrassing position of seeming to have pre-empted the work of a colleague. In effect, he had been manoeuvred into providing the international team with further ammunition to use against him—and, of course, to alienate him further from them…. Allegro displays no propensity for either secrecy or self-aggrandisement. If he is conspiring, he is conspiring only to make the Dead Sea Scrolls available to the world at large, and quickly enough not to betray the trust reposed in academic research. Such an aspiration can only be regarded as honourable and generous.[4]

~ Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh

By 1968, Allegro completed and published all of his translations of the Cave 4 scroll fragments assigned to him and began work on a bookthat he was certain would explain the religious foundations of Christianity and Judaism. In the fifteen years since the international team was put together in 1953 to decipher the scrolls, Allegro was the only member to finish his assigned duty.

Because of Allegro’s so-called errors in his translations and his willingness to release the translations with errors for other scholars to review (for the purpose of finding and eliminating errors), he came under the attack of his team replacement, John Strugnell. Though they had been friends, Strugnell later turned against Allegro and tore apart most of his translations, the effect of which was to further destroy Allegro’s credibility amongst his peers. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh made an explosive indictment of Strugnell and his so-called team of experts in The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, published in 1991, though not all their inferences have been soundly substantiated. Baigent and Leigh suggest that there was a cover-up by Strugnell and the other members of the team, and it was deeper than Allegro had originally imagined.

Strugnell attacked Allegro’s ability to translate because of the early releases that Allegro was willing to put up for debate. In 1970, Strugnell wrote a “rebuttal” against Allegro entitled Notes in the Margin.[5]
This was one of only three pieces Strugnell was ever to write (not publish) in his 30-year career with regards to the scrolls.[6]
The rest of the research team refused to release any of their own translations for nearly four decades, thus hiding any of their own possible errors.

In 1983, Dr. Robert Eisenman[7] of California State University, Long Beach, launched his attack against Strugnell and the other research members of the team. In 1985, Dr. Philip Davies of the University of Sheffield and other international scholars also joined Eisenman’s forces, as did the Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR):

The team of editors has now become more an obstacle to publication than a source of information.[8]

~ Biblical Archaeology Review

Three years after Allegro’s death, in 1991, Strugnell was,with the approval of the Israeli government, dismissed from his position. The Huntington Library in San Marino, California decided to settle the dispute by releasing all their copies of original photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls, thus ending the scroll monopoly by the remaining team members.
This act of heroism caused the remaining members, who had not released the scrolls under their jurisdiction in nearly four decades, to scream “scholarly thievery.” Interestingly, after 35 years of suppression, Dr. Eisenman published fifty of the Dead Sea Scrolls documents just one year after the release of the photographs.[9]

We must remember that Allegro was the only non-Christian member of the research team. All of the other researchers had the predetermined idea, based on flimsy or no evidence, that a man named Jesus Christ really existed.[10] Allegro argued that they had predetermined what they would find in the scrolls. From the start, Allegro and the other researchers never agreed. Since the other researchers did not release their research for nearly four decades, we will never know what they found in the interim.

Allegro’s campaign for open access to the Scrolls was won by other scholars after his death. However, during the late 1960s, the continuing disagreements over publication and interpretation between Allegro and the Establishment arm of Scrolls scholarship meant that he had plenty of enemies.[11]When his brilliant work, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, came out in 1970, it pointed out that the foundation of Christianity and Judaism is not only derived from astrotheology, but much of the mythology surrounding these religions is firmly rooted in fertility cults and psychedelic mushroom and drug use as well. The establishment seized the opportunity to destroy his reputation once and for all.

[Allegro], once a promising young scholar, has been turned into a babbler of sciolistic bawdry by an overdose of the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria.

~ John Strugnell

Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, spent eight months fact-checking Allegro’s work in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross in the 1980’s. Herer had this to say about the book: “He [Allegro] has not made a mistake, excepting a few minor errors.”[12] Herer still stands behind this statement twenty years later, and will soon publish his evidence.

[W]e discussed Allegro when I was in graduate school in the late 1960’s. His scholarship is not respected and his conclusions are fanciful. He should really write science fiction.

~ Dr. John Pilch, Biblical Scholar – Georgetown University

Many Christian organizations and other groups, who had not read any of Allegro’s work, including those who believe the theory that Jesus was a shaman,[13],[14] spent a lot of time and effort to discredit John Allegro’s integrity as well. Instead of taking the time to sit down and research Allegro’s work, to find out what he was referring to, they decided to attack his personality and his integrity. Based on false accusations and lies and with the help of Strugnell and the International team, they misconstrued the facts in order to make it appear as though Allegro was only out to profit from publishing the scrolls and TheSacred Mushroom and the Cross.[15]

Jonathan Ott quotes Wasson extensively on page 352 in his argument against Allegro in Pharmacotheon:

Allegro’s book was originally serialized in an English tabloid of sensationalist stripe (The News of the World[16]), a far cry from the peer-reviewed scholarly literature he normally favored. Allegro never addressed his theory to fellow specialists in Biblical philology. Allegro was paid the princely sum of ₤30,000 for first serialization rights (Wasson in Forte 1988) and at the time was apparently hard-pressed to pay some debts (Wasson, 1977). It is difficult to escape the conclusion that he wrote The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross to make a fast buck. As Wasson later commented, “I think that he [Allegro] jumped to unwarranted conclusions on scanty evidence. And when you make such blunders as attributing the Hebrew language, the Greek language, to Sumerian—that is unacceptable to any linguist.
The Sumerian language is parent to no language and no one knows where it came from” (Wasson in Forte 1988). This and several other points were made in the reviews of Jacobsen and Richardson (1971); see also the criticism of Jacques (1970). Nevertheless, Allegro’s specious theory continues to be taken seriously by some students of entheogenic mushrooms (Haseneier 1992; Klapp 1991), and a recent German anthology on the fly-agaric (Bauer et al. 1991) was dedicated to John Marco Allegro.[17]

~ Jonathan Ott

The enquirer has to begin with his only real source of knowledge, the written word.[18]

~ John Allegro

Unfortunately, when Ott published Pharmacotheon in 1993, he had not realized that Strugnell and his team of “scholars” had lost all credibility by 1991. Allegro had felt unable to submit anything for peer review for years, as he knew biblical scholars would attack him on principle. Baigent and Leigh think scholars were strong-armed by the Vatican’s Ecole Biblique, which they went so far as to suggest is a direct arm of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as “The Holy Inquisition” office of the Vatican.[19] Jonathon Ott’s one remaining item against Allegro is, “And when you make such blunders as attributing the Hebrew language, the Greek language, to Sumerian—that is unacceptable to any linguist.”

On page 334 of Pharmacotheon, Ott admits:

The only evidence Allegro offered was linguistic. Since I am not an expert in Biblical philology, I will not attempt to evaluate his arguments. It should be noted, however, that specialists in the study of Biblical languages have unanimously rejected Allegro’s thesis…

~ Jonathan Ott

When we began to research this scandal in the summer of 2004, we originally believed that it would be necessary to prove whether these arguments against Allegro’s “language bridge” to Sumerian were in fact incorrect. We soon realized that this could require a lifetime of research to accomplish. After contacting many philologists, we often received much of the same blind condemnation against the idea that Allegro had endured.

During our research, however, we were able to find scholars who were willing to hint toward their agreement with Allegro. We contacted Dr. Philip Davies of the University of Sheffield, who was among those fighting John Strugnell and the International Team over scholarly access to the Scrolls. Dr. Davies stressed that he is not specifically a Sumerian palaeographer, there are few. However, he is a leading Hebrew, biblical and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. He had this to say about Allegro’s ideas of the development of Alphabets[20], which may also give credence to Jay Lynn’s work (See Appendix B), and the so-called “language bridge”:

What Allegro said [pg. 11-13 of TheSacred Mushroom and the Cross] is almost certainly correct. That Cuneiform became stylized from an originally more pictographic script is true – the same happened in Egypt as Hieratic and then Demotic script developed from hieroglyphic. The letters of the Semitic alphabet can be shown to undergo the same development – the letter Aleph developed from an original depiction of a bull’s head into various forms in other Semitic languages, while in Greek it was turned 90 degrees clockwise to form the now familiar ‘A’. And so in many other scripts too.

~ Dr. Philip Davies

Since the time Allegro published The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, much new research in the area of fertility cults and their relationship to entheogens, and especially mushrooms, has surfaced.[21],[22]
Finding a Sumerian philologist who possesses a knowledge of entheogens and fertility cults is next to impossible. However, during our research we learned of one highly accredited Sumerian philologist, Anna Partington. Partington is a former associate of Allegro, who also possesses a deep understanding of entheogens and fertility cults. Though not in complete support of his views, this is what she had to say regarding Allegro:

Most people come to the field of Sumerian studies with a background in several early Mideastern languages. Although John was of a previous generation, he was, in common with most Orientalists, perfectly well equipped to deal with cuneiform languages. He found comparative linguistic study especially interesting; but early in his career the finding of the scrolls by the Dead Sea led him to specialise in translation of these Hebrew and Aramaic documents.

Unfortunately, the comparative philological work presented in SMC [The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross]uses a number of hypothetical Sumerian words not attested in texts. These are marked with an asterisk following philological convention. This is akin to proposing there is a word in the English language ‘bellbat’ because the individual words ‘bell’ and ‘bat’ are known to exist separately. Then again words of different languages are gathered together without the type of argument which would be expected in order to demonstrate possible relationship.

~ Anna Partington

We must also point out that both the Allegro family and their associates have informed us that the mushroom origins of religion were a serious area of study for John Allegro. There is no evidence to support the accusations that he was seeking revenge (as some have suggested), or out to make a fast buck. In May, 2005, John Allegro’s daughter, Judith Anne Brown, published John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which proves, from Allegro’s personal archives, that the attacks against him are unfounded.[23]

…Allegro’s suggestion that “Jesus” was a mushroom god is not implausible, considering how widespread was the pre-Christian Jesus/Salvation cult and how other cultures depict their
particular entheogens as “teachers” and “gods.” However, this mushroom identification would represent merely one aspect of the Jesus myth and Christ conspiracy, which, as we have seen incorporated virtually everything at hand, including sex and drugs, widely perceived in pre-Yahwist, pre-Christian cultures as being “godly.[24]

~ Acharya S

David Spess, an expert in ancient Sanskrit (a member of the Semitic language group), has discovered that there is a direct correlation between Middle Eastern religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, and the Rg Vedic Soma use. Spess argues rather successfully that all Indo-European/Mediterranean religions are really a development through Indo-Aryan/Iranian cultures and Soma use in the Rig Vedas. Spess is not the only one to make this suggestion. In 1927, Ganga Prasad wrote The Fountain-Head of Religion: Being A Comparative Study of the Principal Religions of the World and a Manifestation of Their Common Origin from the Vedas,which covers this same topic in detail.

Again it is this Soma, or its two varieties called White Homa, and the Painless Tree which became the prototype of the Biblical “Tree of Knowledge,” and the “Tree of Life” supposed to have existed in Paradise.[25],[26][underline—ours]

With these new facts, we can finally throw out the false indictments claiming, “specialists in the study of Biblical languages have unanimously rejected Allegro’s thesis” and begin to move toward a more mature approach in looking at these ancient religions. Allegro’s ideas were ahead of his time, and it is still very difficult to prove linguistic links to the Sumerian language.

Because this book is not a study of ancient languages, we intend to reveal the truth behind many of Allegro’s ideas through other means. Furthermore, new evidence may suggest that both “Mesopotamian” and Rg Vedic religions are developments from the Ural-Altaic (Siberian) peoples, as Wasson suggested in 1968[28], thus, making arguments about the Mesopotamian origins of religion questionable.[29] It would be interesting to discover if there are possible links to Sumerian, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Greek from the Ural-Altaic language groups, though we
must admit we are not qualified to undertake such research.[30]

An entire book could be written based solely on those who have wrongfully attacked Allegro.[31]
Surprisingly, the most ruinous attacks to his career came from within the psychedelic research community. Many of the arguments against John Allegro seem to have stemmed from R. Gordon Wasson who admitted to never having read Allegro’s work! How can an entire research community base its contentions against Allegro on a man who never read his work? Had any of these researchers had an understanding of fertility cults, archaeoastronomy, and philology, many of Allegro’s theories would not have been heavily contested.

In scholarly circles, word spread that Wasson did not believe that John Allegro’s work was correct.[32]
In 1984, after Jack Herer spent eight months researching many of Allegro’s references, he called Wasson to ask him personally why he felt Allegro’s work was incorrect. Wasson informed Herer that he had actually been too busy to read Allegro’s work himself and that two respected friends, a Jewish Rabbi and a Catholic Monsignor reviewed Allegro’s work and reported back to him that “there was not one single word of truth in the book whatsoever.” This blunder in Wasson’s judgment had a huge impact on Allegro’s credibility in psychedelic research circles which must be set straight. Allegro fell under disrepute among chemists, pharmacologists and psychedelic researchers because he quoted Andrija Puharich[33] (who quoted erroneous pharmacology[34]) in regards to the chemicals present in the Amanita muscaria. Puharich had not verified the chemical composition himself, and this reflected badly on Allegro. This is a minor error in comparison to the wealth of philological information Allegro contributed.

Wasson, in Persephone’s Quest (published posthumously), stated:

I once said that there was no mushroom in the Bible. I was wrong. It plays a major hidden role (that is, hidden from us until now) in the best-known episode of the Old Testament, tale of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. I suppose that few at first, or perhaps none, will agree with me. To propose a novel reading of this celebrated story is a daring thing: it is exhilarating and intimidating. I am confident, ready for the storm.[35]

~ R. Gordon Wasson

Fortunately, for Wasson, Allegro had already weathered the storm. In 1972, Wasson also stated:

I do not suggest that St. John of Patmos ate mushrooms in order to write the book of the Revelation. Yet the succession of images in his vision, so clearly seen and yet such a phantasmagoria, means for me that he was in the same state as one bemushroomed.[36]

~ R. Gordon Wasson

Christians will typically block out new information that invalidates their contention that Jesus was a real man because the validity of their entire religion hinges on that single argument. When discussing other theologies, no matter how similar to Christianity they may be, the Christian will recognize these other theologies as “myth,” while denying vehemently the same possibility for their own Savior.

The fact is that no one else in the research community had ever seriously considered the idea that Jesus Christ was an anthropomorphism of the mushroom.[37] For Allegro to go out on such a limb is proof of his personal integrity to bring us the truth.

When we dig deep into John Allegro’s work, we find exactly why it was so important for the Church and others to attempt to discredit him even while building careers from his work. Many people had jobs on the line and if the majority of Allegro’s work was shown correct at the time, which it is, they would have been out of a job. More importantly, if Allegro’s work had found its way to the mainstream media, Christianity as we know it would have come to a screeching halt. Decades after the release of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and many years after his death, many of John Allegro’s theories are being corroborated by different kinds of non-linguistic evidence. It is unfortunate for Allegro that he did not live to see this day. Such is the life of a martyr. Now is the time for John Marco Allegro to be awarded his due respect.

[1]The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, by Baigent and Leigh; John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Judith Anne Brown.

[2]
In letters to friends in 1957 and 1959 Allegro did voice suspicions about why de Vaux and the others appeared to be delaying publication of the Scrolls, but it would be putting it too strongly (as Baigent and Leigh did) to imply that he publicly alleged a conspiracy at this time. In angry moments, he may well have wanted to do so, but he did not have solid proof, nor enough backing from
government officials and, in later years, acknowledged that the delays were more likely caused by mismanagement, coupled with reluctance or inability to think about the New Testament story in anything other than its orthodox interpretation. –Judith Anne Brown, daughter of John Allegro.

[3]
See John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Judith Anne Brown.

[5]Notes in the Margin is 113 pages of Strugnell’s criticism of Allegro which Dr. Eisenman calls “A hatchet-job” strictly to destroy Allegro’s reputation; see The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Baigent and Leigh, pg. 51.

[6]
On August 1st, 1997, and only after Eisenman and Vermes had released their full translations, did Strugnell finally publish Qumran Cave 4 XV:
Sapiential Texts (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert). It took Strugnell well over 40 years to publish his first work.

[7]
See Robert Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls and The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for over 35 Years, with Michael Wise.

[11]
See John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Judith Anne Brown.

[12]
The errors discussed were in reference to the growth cycle, effects and “bitterness” of Amanita muscaria, and the fact that Allegro overlooked some references to both A. pantherina and P. cubensis, and wrongfully classified Rue as an “abortifacient,” not recognizing Acacia and Rue as an Ayahuasca analogue. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, pg. 67-68, 105, 163-166. Considering Allegro was a philologist, and not a mycologist, these errors are “minor.”

[13]
There is not one shred of historical evidence to suggest a man named Jesus Christ ever lived. Most who believe the notion of a historical Christ have no knowledge of astrotheology. Read Acharya S., GA Wells, Kersey Graves, Gerald Massey, Ernest Busenbark, Jordan Maxwell, Earl Doherty and their many references.

[14] Jesus’ human corruptible body was a question from the beginning of Christianity until The Infallibility Bullof July 18, 1870,where the Pope declared Jesus the son of God and the argument of Homoousian and homoiousian ended under penalty of blasphemy. It took one thousand eight hundred years to squelch the argument of Jesus being the same as or just like the father, as opposed to, or other than just like the father. Either Jesus was the same substance (being) as God, or he was of different substance. –Jay Lynn

[15]
See John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Judith Anne Brown.

[16]
The article and four part series actually ran in the Sunday Mirror on Feb. 15, and April 5, 12, 19, 26 of 1970.

[30]
A connection between Sumerian and the Ural-Altaic language group has been suggested. See Polat Kaya, M. Sc. E. E. 1997 – “5. SUMERIAN AND URAL-ALTAIC KINSHIP: The Ural-Altaic languages are related to the Sumerian language.
According to Hymes list of 100 common root words of Ural-Altaic and Sumerian languages used as tests for comparing these languages, any language that has 47% of the root words given in the list can be considered a direct descendant of the Sumerian language…. This test takes into account the fact that Sumerian and the present day Ural-Altaic languages are separated from each other in time
by a duration of five thousand years. Turkish and Hungarian both pass this test with results far better than 50%, hence can be considered as direct descendants of Sumerian. In view of the Hymes test, the proto-Ural-Altaic language and Sumerian must have been one and the same.”

[31]
In May 2005, Judith Anne Brown, John Allegro’s daughter, released her new book entitled: John Marco Allegro – The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This fantastic book is dedicated to debunking the wrongful attacks against Allegro and his research. A Christian View of the Mushroom Myth, by John C. King, and The Mushroom and the Bride, by John H. Jacques, are two books dedicated to making unjust attacks against Allegro and his research.

[32]
Interestingly, it was Wasson who first proposed that the Bible was based on entheogens in Soma, though he later retracted this statement. Allegro took the idea, being a biblical expert, and ran with it.

[33]The Sacred Mushroom: Key to the Door of Eternity, by Andrija Puharich.

Categories

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, 40th Anniversary Edition

John M. Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
40th Anniversary Edition

The Holy Mushroom

Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity by Jan Irvin
A critical re-evaluation of the schism between John M. Allegro and R. Gordon Wasson over the theory on the entheogenic origins of Christianity presented in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross